Transport Committee on Dec. 6th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. MacGregor.

On the list we have Mr. Lewis, followed by Mr. Barsalou-Duval and then Mr. Muys.

We'll turn the floor over to Mr. Lewis.

I see Mr. Strahl's hand up. I will add your name to the list as well, sir.

Mr. Lewis, the floor is yours.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Okay. I'll move on to Mr. Lewis.

We're talking about the subamendment now.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's always good to be back at committee.

I do appreciate my colleague, the member from the NDP, with regard to this subamendment. I really, truthfully do, Mr. Chair, because I think he's realizing and recognizing the fact that there are hundreds of good-paying jobs at stake here.

I really thank our government officials for being here this evening as well. Mr. Strahl asked some very pointed questions, and as the shadow minister for labour, of course, I have to ask these questions, too. Whether it's the subamendment or the amendment we're speaking to, it always goes back to the jobs.

The one thing I know for darn sure, Mr. Chair, is that we are hemorrhaging and bleeding jobs in this country. There are businesses that are begging for workers. To not have answers and make an assumption, make a decision and vote on something that is going to affect up to 350 families arbitrarily—the food on the table of the families—is, quite frankly, wrong, Mr. Chair.

I have been told all along that we're talking about 350 jobs.

Ms. Read, thank you very much for your testimony tonight. I believe you said 250.

Can you please tell me where your numbers come from and how that would change from the numbers that I.... I was literally on the phone yesterday with the ILWU, trying to get the facts.

Can you please tell me where those numbers come from?

[Sonya Read]

The information I have is that they have 250 full-time employees. They may have other employees.

In terms of background, I don't have the footnote. I don't have the source in front of me.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

I can appreciate that, Ms. Read. Thank you very much for that.

I'm going to take it one step further. Mr. Strahl asked you how many jobs would be lost, and your answer was that they have 250 employees.

Does the government not know or does the agency not know how many would be lost?

[Sonya Read]

At this time, I wouldn't be able to answer that question.

My understanding is that it would actually depend on the transition plans of the terminal. I would defer to colleagues at ECCC or NRCan, who may be more familiar with that process.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Could you please give me a time frame as to when you may have that answer?

[Sonya Read]

I would have to check with other departments in respect of where they are in those conversations.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you.

We see the legislation in Bill C-58 that has been brought to the House. I'll be honest with you. If I were the minister of labour for the Liberal Party of Canada right now, I'd be some ticked off that we're even talking about this at transport committee. How do you on one side throw a bone to labour and say that you're labour-friendly, and then on the other turn around and not do the due diligence, the justice and the really hard work of asking the really hard questions about who's going to be affected by this.

These are potentially 350 families sitting around a kitchen table with no food on their table, no pablum for their children's bottles, no diapers on their babies' bums, all because we need to accelerate a plan.

The Bloc Québécois member is now laughing at me. This is very serious stuff, sir. These are people's lives we're talking about. To accelerate a plan and not have a plan to go forward is quite frankly wrong and disgusting, and to smile and laugh about something like that is quite frankly wrong. I take major offence to that.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval]

Thank you.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you.

An accelerated phase-out thermal coal plan with no plan is nothing less than the wrong decision for our ports.

Chair, I've spent many days on the west coast with the ILWU and with the BCMEA during the strikes, understanding and realizing that it is a very vital area for Canada in terms of moving our commodities and driving our exports and our imports, our cars, and everything else the government wants to talk about. They are the ones doing the work, and now, potentially, we're going to take them out at the knees. I think that's pretty sad.

I want to take it a step further. My riding of Essex—I'm so darn proud to represent Essex—is right next to the busiest international border crossing in North America, right down by Detroit.

Through you, Mr. Chair, to our officials, it was very concerning to me that there were no answers for Mr. Strahl with regard to whether we had spoken to our U.S. officials yet.

Through you, Mr. Chair, can any of you kindly expand on this at all? Has there been absolutely no conversation with our U.S. officials on this?

[Sonya Read]

I would have to defer to colleagues at NRCan or ECCC in respect to conversations that have taken place with U.S. officials in this regard.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Are you comfortable going forward with this before you have those conversations with those colleagues?

[Sonya Read]

I wouldn't be in a position to answer that question. I'm sorry.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Who would be, Ms. Read? Who would be the one to ask for that answer?

[Sonya Read]

As an official at the table, it actually isn't my place to expand on whether I'm comfortable or not comfortable in respect of a particular provision being brought forward for members to discuss.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. I am truthfully being very respectful. I'm trying my best to be very respectful to you. I think if I don't ask these questions, then I'm not doing the due diligence.

I'm incredibly concerned, Mr. Chair.

Are we just going to turn around and slap the United States of America in the face, not have a conversation about this, when so much of their thermal coal actually comes up through the States on our train system and gets exported? Are we going to just turn around and pass an amendment and then affect potentially 350 jobs? Let's extrapolate that and say it's 1,200 or 1,500—

[An hon. member]

[Inaudible—Editor]

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Mr. Chair, please, I have the floor.

I'm incredibly concerned about this, and I have every right in the world to be concerned about it.

Chair, can you please call the member to order? Mr. Badawey is—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

I would ask all members to ensure that when a member is trying to speak, they are able to do so.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Mr. Chairman, I truly, truly apologize.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Badawey.

Mr. Lewis, the floor is yours.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'm glad, Mr. Badawey, that you find this discussion a joke as well. Apparently, you don't care about the workers down in Hamilton. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Amendment BQ-5 has the potential to have, and would likely have, a major, major effect on our Canadian economy and a major effect, perhaps, on U.S. relations with Canada. Until we get all the answers we're looking for, I don't see a path forward that's going to work. Quite frankly, I don't see one.

Again, Mr. Chair, I want to talk about the ILWU. Yesterday I was on a phone call with the ILWU. You know, I believe it to be true—and I only believe it to be true; I don't know for sure—that they actually might have reached out to other folks from the other parties as well and asked them to reconsider this. I'm not exactly sure where that landed as of yet, but if you're a friend for labour then you're a friend for labour. You can't be a friend for one side of labour and not a friend for the other side of labour.

In my capacity, I will just suggest, Mr. Chair, that I really believe we've come far too short. The answers have not fallen on the table. We're asking far too much, with no results to date. I think we need to continue to have these discussions. When we get the answers, will it be 250 families who perhaps won't have Christmas presents under the tree, or will it be 350? We don't know that. Until we get the answers, though, we need to know.

If people around the table want to laugh, that's fine, but I'm not laughing. I'm not laughing; I'm darn serious, and I think it's despicable and disgusting that others are.

With that, Mr. Chair, I'll cede the floor.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lewis.

It's now Mr. Barsalou-Duval's turn.

Mr. Barsalou-Duval, you have the floor.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think we have a lot of time to talk about Amendment BQ‑5. I see that a lot has been said, and I have a feeling we'll be talking about it for a little while yet. That said, for the benefit of the people listening—and I hope there are a lot of them—I'm going to take the time to explain the ridiculous situation we find ourselves in.

The purpose of the proposed amendment to Bill C‑33 that we're discussing right now, Amendment BQ‑5, is to put an end to the export and import of thermal coal. Why do we want to put an end to this? Because thermal coal is probably the worst way in the world to produce electricity. I don't think there is a worse way. Right now, if I'm not mistaken, 31% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions are produced by coal-fired power plants. Coal-fired power plants alone account for 31% of emissions. Canada is the world's seventh-largest coal exporter. So we're complicit in this. Canada is one of the main countries causing this extreme pollution on a planetary scale.

Interestingly, the government had already announced that it intended to end the export and import of coal at Canadian ports. That was good news. However, the bad news was that this would not happen until 2030. You might say 2030 is better than never.

The Conservatives got scared. They said we couldn't end coal production and that it didn't make sense. Finally, they tell us they agree on the year 2030. I'm surprised. I hope we can see that today, because we're going to put the Conservatives' word to the test. If the Conservatives tell us that they agree on the 2030 date—that's what we've heard—that means that, in theory, they'll vote in favour of a proposal to that effect.

There's a famous coal mine in Alberta. I'd have to find its name. The Conservative member mentioned it earlier today. The people listening to us, and those around the table, may not know it, but this mine currently produces 10 million tonnes of thermal coal a year. In terms of pollution, that's the equivalent of the Quebec car fleet. It's huge. It's enormous. It's monstrous. It's gigantic. A single plant produces as much greenhouse gas with its coal as the entire Quebec car fleet. Yet the Conservatives are rending their garments. They say we absolutely mustn't touch this. How, then, are we going to stop climate change? How are we ever going to mitigate climate change if we don't tackle this and we let one plant produce as much pollution as all the cars in Quebec? It's crazy.

And yet, the Liberals say we shouldn't touch it before 2030. I have the impression—we'll see—that the Conservatives say it should never be touched. If we follow their plan of action, we'll all die of asphyxiation before we manage to pass anything, Mr. Chair. I think that's pretty crazy. I feel like I'm witnessing a crude farce, because I think the Conservatives don't respect people's intelligence. An MP told us earlier that parents won't have any more diapers for their children if we close this plant. He became indignant when I laughed. It doesn't make any sense. People won't have diapers because we're not producing coal anymore. Is that it? It doesn't make sense.

There might be ways of doing things differently. In Quebec, we decided to put an end to certain industries we deemed harmful to the collective interest. We can do the same thing on a state level.

For example, in Quebec, the decision was made to end the use of nuclear energy, and the Gentilly‑2 nuclear power plant was shut down. People lost their jobs. That's true. However, there are others who still have jobs there, because the plant has to be dismantled to safely end its operations.

We also decided to end asbestos production, Mr. Chair, because it was causing cancer, killing people, here and abroad. At some point, we got smart, and figured it might not be a bad idea to end production of something that's killing people.

Coal kills people, Mr. Chair. What's more, it's not half of Canada's economy that's based on this industry, but a tiny proportion—